Atari announces one of its biggest-ever announcements is coming, so prepare for absolute carnage if you like your retro

Atari has announced that it is about to announce something, and ordinarily that sentence would be enough to make me close the browser and go outside. Living in a world of constant marketing bombardment and PR Shock and Awe, my mind has become numb to this sort of stuff. Unfortunately, Atari has also described the mystery reveal as “one of the biggest announcements we’ve ever made,” so plans are now cancelled, and the speculation machine must be fed.

This is Atari, okay, so not OG Atari, but pretty big when it comes to things it could be – It’s going to be a Pac-Man water bottle isn’t it?

Atari has launched an official “Something Big Is Coming” page inviting fans to register their email address – and optionally their phone number – to be among the first to hear whatever is currently lurking behind the curtain. Probably worth noting it was not letting me add my UK phone number, but I didn’t try overly hard.

“One of the biggest announcements we’ve ever made is coming soon,” the page declares. That is an outrageous amount of weight to place upon a few words, especially when the company involved helped build the foundations of the entire video game industry.

The only apparent clue is a line sitting above the main message: “We have a vision for your game shelf.”

That reference to a shelf certainly sounds physical. Atari has spent the past few years putting cartridges back into boxes, launching the Atari 2600+ and 7800+, resurrecting the Intellivision as the Intellivision Sprint, and generally behaving as though the last 40 years were just an unfortunate admin error.

A major expansion of its physical cartridge range would therefore make sense. A new platform or storefront connecting Atari’s growing collection of games is another possibility, while some fans believe the announcement could involve the return of titles Atari published during the 1970s and 1980s but no longer controls..

Some members of the AtariAge community have pulled the words “a vision” from Atari’s clue and arrived at “Activision.” Combine that with the reference to a game shelf and you have a theory involving physical reissues of classic Activision cartridges. This would be exciting. I did mention Activision legend David Crane and the amazing Pitfall! in my feature the other day,

The prospect is magnificent. Pitfall!, River Raid, H.E.R.O., Kaboom!, and Enduro returning to Atari-branded shelves would qualify as pretty enormous. It would also reunite Atari hardware with games created by the company founded by former Atari programmers who left after being denied recognition and royalties – one hell of an historical circle to close.

Look, I grew up on the Intellivision side of the original console war, but even I recognise the strange power of the Atari Fuji logo. I wish the Sprint could take carts too because I have 89 original Intellivision ones in a plastic box near my feet, and my original Intellivision is in a preservation state at this point.

The timing also makes this tease more believable than it might have been during some of Atari’s stranger wilderness years. The company recently returned to profitability, recording its highest annual revenue in more than a decade after a period of acquisitions and renewed investment in classic games and hardware. Atari now owns a considerably larger portfolio of studios, publishers and properties than it did just a few years ago. Reuters reported that its recent expansion has included Thunderful, Crossy Road developer Hipster Whale and several former Ubisoft properties.

There is genuine momentum behind the name again, which means Atari might just have earned the right to lay the hype on this thick.

No reveal date has been provided, because Atari would prefer us to spend the immediate future staring at the words “game shelf” until they reveal their secrets, which surely can’t be far off if it has announced the announcement. Anyone wanting to join this rapidly escalating fever dream can register on Atari’s teaser page.

Whatever is coming, it now needs to be enormous. Atari said so itself.

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